There are two basic communication problems which arise because of the nature of what may be called "supermarket" merchandising. The shopping or marketing areas are vast and the number of items or products on display and available for selection and purchase are numerous.
One problem is that of communicating to the shopper the actual location of the items that are desired for purchase. That many of the items are difficult to find by a shopper is a well known fact to anyone who has frequented a modern supermarket and encountered the numerous item displays in the marketing area. The market managers usually resort to overhead signs or displays that carry incomplete lists of available items with seemingly appropriate aisle designations. Such designations are often out of date and are usually only general in nature.
The latest approach has been to supplement the use of such overhead displays with the use of placards or posters bearing item lists with designated locations. These posters are mounted on the shopping carts used by the shoppers in carrying items that have been selected for purchase. Again, however, the lists of items are usually incomplete and the designated locations lack specificity. Also, they are often so mounted on the shopping carts as to become obscured or covered by items that have been selected for purchase and are being carried in the shopping carts.
Such attempts to solve the product location problem have been generally unsatisfactory to both the shopper and the management of the market as is evident by the numerous request that are still made of supermarket personnel for the location of items.
The second problem of communication has to do with product advertising at the point of product selection. Shelf space is limited in any marketing area and the use of placards or posters at the points of display for the items offered for purchase, although used extensively, is unsatisfactory. The posters obscure the view of the products being displayed, take up space and must frequently be so small in some marketing areas as to be ineffective for their intended purpose. In general, the use of the posters and displays is limited by many store managers to product item specials that are frequently displayed in large quanities and usually located at the ends of the aisles for the shelved items in the marketing area.
The lack of shelf and floor space for advertising has lead some product purveyors to set up special displays at some store locations. In such cases, television receivers and viewing screens for movie or slide projectors have been strategically located in the marketing area as displays to gain product identity or to explain the use of a product. Such displays are usually set up in a special area within the marketing area. Apart from this, the message being communicated is usually limited to one product and frequently takes so much time to present as to precipitate buyer disinterest. Furthermore, the space available for shopper viewing in such instances is usually limited and the costs for communicating the message to each buyer are excessive by market standards.
Other attempts to solve the advertising problem at the point of product selection have involved the use of loud speakers which are fed prerecorded messages about the displayed item. In other cases, visual displays have been used at the point of product selection and which involve the use of traveling word messages about the products.